So how can NYCDataWell, yet another piece of modern technology dependent on electricity, help out in something like Sandy?

First of all, if you read "An NYCDataWell Story", you can see that the DataWell we envisioned will have backup power and can be hooked up to a power source in a number of ways (e.g. firetruck, police car, generator hooked up by the local Community Board, etc.)

With that addressed, let's imagine now an alternative version of the Sandy evacuation.

When Mayor Bloomberg called for the mandatory evacuation of Zone A, wouldn't it have helped if DWs connected to a display can show that information in a hyperlocal context?

While walking around the City during one of our many Reinvent expeditions , we noticed things that we haven't paid attention to before.

First of all, we were surprised how many payphones there still are. None of us can remember the last time we used one. To us, they were billboards that happen to make calls.

We also noticed that the City took pains to preserve the look of certain neighborhoods.

Union Square for instance. It still had traditional lampposts. And even modern additions, like the Digital Display on top of the subway station entrance, were camouflaged not to draw attention to themselves.

And that's one reason why we went for modularity and chose to even have a bare-bones, plate-only configuration.

Why?

In Union Square, we envision several plate-only DWs talking wirelessly to mated devices. Why, the City can even go for a "nostalgia" deployment that uses a turn-of-the-century phonebooth instead of the modern pole configuration we designed.

Perhaps, an NYCDataWell sticker, similar to the ubiquitous Wifi stickers can be used to let people know that DW services are available even in an unconventional, camouflaged location.

But because of the mobile app burnout phenomenon and being NYCBigApps veterans, we also knew that it takes more than just having a NYCDataWell API.

Thus, we imagined the NYCDataWell Launcher App. It doesn't seek to be the one app to rule them all, rather, we imagined a Launcher app with its own Notification API that allowed smartphone developers, even amateur civic hackers, to surface contextual, categorized actionable information to the user.

When the user then selects to get more information about the notification, the Launcher invokes the relevant application.

We were so compelled with the idea that we even created a prototype. Check it out!

Infographics and other visualization techniques have allowed the general public to better understand data.

What if we use the NYCDataWell to create not only dynamic, hyperlocalized infographics at the street level, but also InfoStreetArt?

Taking it beyond the CowParade and the Tidy Street Project, the City can challenge local artists, data scientists, and civic hackers to create InfoStreetArt that not only engages the imagination, but also fulfill a civic purpose:

Neighborhood Debt Clock

311 Complaint type visualizations, localized to the street corner

Recycling Gamified

Noise-scoring NYC

Hyperlocalized Public Service Announcements (e.g. Did you know that you'll need to walk from here to Central Park to burn the calories from one 16oz sode?)